Dressing down is one of the defining features of our time. We see it in Silicon Valley startup founders all the time. Take Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg or Evan Speigel’s Snapchat. These people usually dress in hoodies or just plain T-shirts and jeans. Sadly, many people who are less talented than these guys try to emulate this dress code without realizing that it works to their disadvantage.
The emulators don’t realize that these Silicon Valley guys dress the way they do because they can afford it. They don’t have to dress to impress because they’re already successful.
But for the rest of us who are not very successful yet, we have to remember that there is such a thing as dressing for success. If you want people to take you seriously, you must present yourself formally and seriously. It’s wrong to judge people by the way they dress, yet we do it all the time. That’s why you should pay attention to the way you dress. George Horace Lorimer gives us a good reminder as to why we should give more thought to our choice of clothes. He says:
Clothes don’t make the man, but they make all of him except his hands and face during business hours, and that’s a pretty considerable area of the human animal.
I’ve come to learn that success is mainly about winning favors from people who are more successful than you. And to be on the good side of these successful people, you have to present yourself in a way that makes you appealing to them.
Lorimer underscores this point on dressing well by saying:
Appearances are deceitful, I know, but so long as they are, there’s nothing like having them deceive for us instead of against us.
You may have a lot to offer, but if the way you dress suggests that you have nothing to offer most people won’t give you a chance. If you’re not successful yet, you can’t afford to not dress for success. And if you’re already successful, you can afford to. People who dress for success tend to achieve it more readily.